De-icing aircraft is a necessary inconvenience. The process at most major airports requires planes to maneuver to reach de-icing equipment and passengers on those planes typically experience delays that foul up a lot of schedules.

Wednesday morning at Detroit Metro Airport, the inconvenience was multiplied. The wing of American Airlines flight 1231 clipped the tail section of Southwest flight 6 as the American flight was moving to get de-iced.

Jim Bishop, a passenger on the American flight, recounted the incident and sent the photo displayed above to local television station WWJ.

“We were taxiing over to get the wings de-iced and there was a plane sitting, kind of facing the opposite direction, and our wing came across the back of that plane and we were just too close to it and clipped the back,” he said. “It tore a piece of our wing off and the tail cone is cut completely off of the other plane.”

The accident occurred at about 6 a.m. and the passengers were stuck on both planes for about three hours as the situation was assessed. Representatives from the National Transportation Safety Board are headed to the airport to investigate the incident.

Canada’s Bombardier Cutting 7,000 Jobs

The volatility of the aviation business became clear Wednesday when Canada’s Bombardier announced job cuts. That news came in the same week when United States airlines American and Southwest said they would continue the trend of hiring more employees.

Bombardier said it would cut 10 percent of its workforce or about 7,000 jobs as the company undergoes major restructuring in 2016. The company posted revenues of $18.2 million for 2015, a 9.5 percent drop from 2014.

At the same time Bombardier announced a $3.8 billion deal with Air Canada to buy 45 CS300 jets, with options to purchase another 30 planes.

Mitsubishi Announces Deal For Still-Developing Regional Jet

Mitsubishi’s regional jet received a big boost with the news that Aerolease Aviation, a Florida-based lessor has agreed to buy 10 MRJs with an option to buy 10 more. Aerolease currently has a fleet of 40 used Boeing 757s.

Aerolease becomes the first company to buy the regional jet, which is expected to make its commercial debut in 2018. The plane was slated to be ready in 2014 but a series of testing troubles has pushed back the debut.

Wendell Barnhouse is a veteran journalist with over 40 years of experience as a writer and an editor. For the last 30 years, he wrote about college sports but he has had an interest and curiosity about aviation since he was in grade school.